FLAKES

2017, Graphics, video.

2017 — The Ural industrial biennial of contemporary art.

Artist-in-residence program. Ekaterinburg, Russia.

You — are that quarry: uncompromising millstones grind the ore inside, turn unintended fossils so as to get authentic memories by averaging and cleaning. Memories crumpled into a dream, mixed with reality, confused with the impossible.

Graphite is one of the hardest substances created by earth, disassembled into flakes and pressed into a pencil lead, it turns into one of the most fragile household items. Even an invisible fracture, hidden by a wooden shell, turns out to be fatal, puts drawing existence into danger.

In destruction of graphite’s structure, its crystal lattice lies the secret of transformation — the most complex and orderly of its variations is a diamond, the most technological, grown from the plane is graphene. Graphene is graphite’s life in new technologies, the guarantee of its ubiquitous distribution under circumstances of analog pencil abolishing.

The Urals have the largest Russian deposit of graphite, one of the most widespread in the world of pencil brands KOH-I-NOOR created its pencils from Ural graphite, Ural kaolin and Siberian cedar.

The actual production of graphite shows through in graphic works, in video including the plot, the intra-uterine buzz of unstoppable processing machines. Graphite itself covers the drawings, breaks through in the video, with shiny dust in thin air it lies on weightless canvases.

Exhibition curator — Zhenya Chaika

Text — Zhenya Chaika

Photo — Tanya Akhmetgalieva

Graphite for the project is provided by the Taiginsky Mining and Processing Plant LLC.